Entries by Erin Stalcup

The Narcissist’s Cure for Aging 
Sydney Alexander

Honorable Mention, International Young Writers Prize, Fiction

June 11, 2020 in /by

                    “If he but fail to recognize himself, a long life he may have.” – Ovid’s Metamorphoses Imagine! If we think of ourselves divided into separate entities of existence from the time we are born until we draw our last breath, then the stages in which we live are distinguishable by variations of the aging shell. […]

Scheduled Epiphany 
Samantha Haviland

Honorable Mention, International Young Writers Prize, Nonfiction

June 11, 2020 in /by

Disclaimer: As I write this essay, attempting to embody rebellion and denounce society, I must also recognize that by writing this essay I am only fulfilling my predetermined role in society—this is a scheduled epiphany.   I am a high school sophomore Student: 512222080 Statistics from 7:45 to 8:30, Homeroom from 8:33 to 8:45, Chemistry […]

There is a name for our present tense 
Duy Quang Mai

Honorable Mention, International Young Writers Prize, Nonfiction

June 11, 2020 in /by

                    —after Ocean Vuong   1981’s April. Sweats pearled the shades of dawn. Sunlight inked into your clothes. How everything stilled in the carving heat. You both were young and had numbered days to count. You both worked as factory laborers while in university. Life was a few chapters behind then. Beginning years whittled down to […]

Ross Gay’s Book of Delights and Jericho Parms’ Craft Module: Forms of Joy

by Sara Stancliffe

May 12, 2020 in /by

Ross Gay seems like a pretty delightful guy. Just watch any video of his poetry readings or his interviews, and you’ll see. His face is disproportionately made up of smile, and despite his tall frame, he exudes a warm approachability. Then go read his work, specifically his good-things-come-in-small-packages collection of essayettes, The Book of Delights. Ross (it just […]

An Interview with David Shields

by Amanda Leahy

May 8, 2020 in /by

It’s a gray Tuesday evening, rainy and cold, when I FaceTime with my former professor David Shields from my apartment in Montpelier, Vermont. He’s walking in Seattle, where, much to my surprise, the sun is shining brilliantly. He wears sunglasses, his signature black hat and jacket.  We talk for a while about what we’ve been […]

The Making of a Monster: A Craft Analysis of Joker

by Noni Salma

April 28, 2020 in /by

From the first frame, it becomes quite clear that Todd Phillip’s Joker won’t be an easy watch; we dolly in slowly on what looks like a male clown-for-hire, mid-construction. He stops in the middle of it to grin in the mirror, using his fingers to spread his face into a smile and then randomly breaks […]

An Interview with Amahl Khouri

by Virginia Booth

April 28, 2020 in /by

Virginia Booth: Amahl, I’m really curious to hear more about your participation with the Climate Change Theatre Action, and your play Oh, How We Loved Our Tuna! Amahl Khouri: How did it start? That’s a good question. I was invited by the Climate Change Theatre twice to participate in this global initiative. Weirdly enough I had […]

Three Poems

W. Todd Kaneko

February 27, 2020 in , /by

Looking Outside Airplane Windows   I expect to see that boy in the clouds, sad faced, barbed wire tattoo ablaze where no one can see it— not a tattoo but a scar wrapped around his belly like a belt cinched tight to hold his body together. Every cloud dissolves one day, leaving so many boys […]

Two Poems

Rosebud Ben-Oni

February 27, 2020 in , /by

Efes Wrestling with the Poet Who Won’t Look Away   To set fire to warships in the water                                                                                            cast your mirror as parabola. You still won’t quiet these waters.                                                                Finite are bodies to drown. Infinite only the quarks & electrons that you won’t see                                           keeping you as one. As more than. Similar. Don’t reduce me, says the reflection. […]

Narrowing

Mark Powell

February 27, 2020 in , /by

She was still sick from the Lortab they had given her in the emergency room, but at least she was finally sitting up, finally drinking a Met-Rx shake through a silly straw, her jaw wired shut. All of this beneath the camper shell of her boyfriend Kenny’s Tacoma, all of this somewhere in East Texas. Uvalde or maybe […]

Two Poems

Jake Skeets

February 27, 2020 in , /by

Red Running Into Water   tsi’naajinii nishłí pronounce the ł as water whistling through shadow                on black bark the í as boy wearing only yucca                lake colored tábąąhá báshíshchíín the í is now mouth of narrow stream                inside a pink mobile home with white skirting the ą sounds like pulling hair                from the throat shaped […]

A Review of Wives’ So Removed

by Tracy Haught

February 26, 2020 in /by

A forty-something-year-old woman is probably not the target audience for Brooklyn-based band Wives’ debut album, So Removed, but I’m here to tell you that what they’ve got going on is ageless. I would’ve listened to this album at any point in my life and am currently digging it as much as someone in their twenties […]

Excerpt from Postpartum Confinement/
産褥の記 の書き抜き

Akiko Yosano, 
translated from Japanese by Marissa Skeels

February 25, 2020 in , /by

Excerpt from Postpartum Confinement Akiko Yosano, translated from Japanese by Marissa Skeels   A nurse waits in the prep-room next door. There is a small cooking stove in there, tea ware and hand towels, and a supply closet. It seems the sort of place where tableware gets boxed up. Clattering of its iron kettle boiling, squeaks of faucets being […]

Two Poems

Eloisa Amezcua

February 22, 2020 in , /by

I Haven’t Masturbated in Five Daysfor Fear of Crying   her eyes closed the way my eyes sometimes close when I reach a hand  between my thighs              pretend they’re someone else’s fingers that slide  the unsexiest pair of panties I own to the side of a lip                              her neck  outstretched          the curve of her trachea like the bend […]

Transformations

Theophilus Kwek

February 21, 2020 in , /by

on Meng Haoran’s “Spring Dawn” for Hong Kong   春曉 春眠不覺曉， 處處聞啼鳥。 夜來風雨聲， 花落知多少。      —孟浩然   0. The seasons have changed with a sudden force and the birds, who know, cannot keep the peace.   1. The peace, we know, is a bitter thing. It has been washed in the eye of the harbor.   […]

Announcing Our Guest Judges for the 2020 Hunger Mountain Writing Prizes

February 18, 2020 in /by

2020 Deadline is March 1! Enter the contests here. The 2020 judges are: Claire Vaye Watkins – Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize Robin Black – Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize  Vievee Francis – Ruth Stone Poetry Prize Sara B. Larson – Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing Claire Vaye Watkins is […]

Efes Wrestling with the Poet Who Won’t Look Away

Rosebud Ben-Oni

February 17, 2020 in /by

To set fire to warships in the water                                                                                            cast your mirror as parabola. You still won’t quiet these waters.                                                                Finite are bodies to drown. Infinite only the quarks & electrons that you won’t see                                           keeping you as one. As more than. Similar. Don’t reduce me, says the reflection. But it’s already done. It’s a whisper.   As if nothing still.   Lies […]

Three Poems

Lizzy Fox

February 16, 2020 in , /by

How to Make Art   Even when I’m sick, when I feel the thorn of a sore throat prick my right tonsil, and I purr through a stuffed nose while I dream of spilling my coffee because I’m stumbling through the house without opening my eyes because I can’t open my eyes because I’m still […]

Two Monologues from Winesburg, Indiana, a small town between Fort Wayne and South Bend and not that far from Warsaw

Michael Martone

February 3, 2020 in /by

Mario Talarico’s Peonies My favorite variety is the Eleanor Roosevelt. I am very conscientious in the spring. I stake and cage the plants. I am careful to deadhead the side branching buds to lessen the weight. I know, you are thinking about the ants, but I don’t mind the ants. The ants are as drunk […]

Show & Tell: Making Body Language Work for Your Story

Molly Martin

January 29, 2020 in /by

Most writers are familiar with the advice, “Show, don’t tell.” It is as simple as it is vague and like many aphorisms, it’s largely not practical or useful on a daily basis. A quick word on telling—there are numerous places where telling or exposition is entirely appropriate. Not every aspect of a story deserves equal […]

Long Dash

John A. Nieves

January 27, 2020 in , /by

The first five days read yellow against the window shade. The water                     pressure barely knew its way                                         through the pipes. We accordioned                       the hours on a damp queen with pale green sheets. It was always morning. The dew always just leaving again                                         for the sky. No one                                           named us. No one spent a […]

The Otchka

Noah Weisz

January 27, 2020 in , /by

On a windy autumn morning in the city of Gholàr, Par and his mother set off for the Otchka. They left their small apartment pushing and pulling a massive old cart that shuddered and groaned at every cobblestone bump. Objects bounced, straining against the ropes that tied them down—a frayed velvet armchair, a wide wooden bench, a bicycle, two […]

Fashion, 1860

Lizzy Fox

January 17, 2020 in /by

Fashion, 1860   Ballerinas were particularly vulnerable, the tarlatan and gauze. But all girls could light like chimney fires— the bells of their hollow hoop skirts funneling air up the legs. In the days of fireplaces and gas stage lamps, don’t dance so close. Three thousand women burned that year catching a hem, tipping a […]

On Power

Lizzy Fox

January 17, 2020 in /by

 On Power   “As a man’s knowledge grows, and his power increases, the road he takes grows ever narrower, until at last he does only and wholly what he must.” —Ursula K. Le Guin   Bicep, bone, bloodstream, esophagus, coughing fits, apologies, laughter in the vocal cords and a current of air— a lamp […]

How to Make Art

Lizzy Fox

January 17, 2020 in /by

How to Make Art   Even when I’m sick, when I feel the thorn of a sore throat prick my right tonsil, and I purr through a stuffed nose while I dream of spilling my coffee because I’m stumbling through the house without opening my eyes because I can’t open my eyes because I’m still […]

Two More Monologues from Winesburg, Indiana, a small town between Fort Wayne and South Bend and not that far from Warsaw

Michael Martone

November 5, 2019 in /by

Maurice Milkin, Eraser Carver I go to the Pink Pearl factory store at the factory and buy the ones, discounted, beyond their expiration date. Stale erasers. I have been sculpting for years. Sculpting is about seeing what is not there, the negative space, the foil, the relief. It isn’t lost upon me that in my […]

No Tomorrow

Brad Rose

November 5, 2019 in , /by

It’s a circular night and my blood is itchy. As soon as the now is over, I’m going to disentangle the amnesic kilowatts nestled inside these invisible particles. The house is still as a sleeping animal, and I’ve had it up to here with working the swing shift. Before we moved in, I used to […]

Drift(er)

Jake Skeets

October 22, 2019 in /by

                    after “Benson James, drifter. Route 66, Gallup, NM 1979” by Richard Avedon   Drift to drift is to be carried by current of air or water                                         but men are not the teeth of their verbs they pry nouns open with a belt buckle to take a sip Drifter a drifter carried by a current of […]

Red Running Into Water

Jake Skeets

October 11, 2019 in /by

tsi’naajinii nishłí pronounce the ł as water whistling through shadow                     on black bark the í as boy wearing only yucca                     lake colored tábąąhá báshíshchíín the í is now mouth of narrow stream                     inside a pink mobile home with white skirting the ą sounds like pulling hair                     from the throat shaped like the á táchii’nii dashícheii […]

Announcing our Guest Editors for Issue #24

September 15, 2019 in /by

Issue #24 is themed Patterns. Deadline is October 15th! Submit here.   Poetry: TC Tolbert identifies as a trans and genderqueer feminist, collaborator, mover, and poet. And, s/he’s a human in love with humans doing human things. S/he is author of Gephyromania (Ahsahta Press 2014), 4 chapbooks, and co-editor of Troubling the Line: Trans and […]

Birth of Cool

Rita Banerjee

September 8, 2019 in , /by

Lauren played her Gibson on the phone for me. Voodoo Child. Learning Hendrix one blistered finger at a time. Stairway to Heaven. A poster of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant hung on her bedroom wall. Plant made love to the microphone in his too-tight jeans and denim jacket. His threads hadn’t been washed in decades. Neither had he. His […]

The Cave Sighs
Ellen Goff

Young Adult Winner, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing

July 15, 2019 in /by

The cave remembers. More than remembers, the cave sees far past the surface under which she sleeps. Her tributaries of tunnels, like hollow fingers, spread underground for hundreds of miles. They touch acre after acre, town after town, and county after county. As if she is a single, enormous mass of substance, top indistinguishable from […]

When Everything Was Whiskey Creek
Anna Craig

Middle Grade Winner, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing

July 15, 2019 in /by

One Santa Ynez Beach, California 1976 Mandalay Bates skipped across the sidewalk, so white hot, it scorched her sandals. Sun blistered the eucalyptus trees, setting their leaves a-shiver. The Santa Anas gushed through Mandalay’s hair. They weren’t playing, these winds. The Santa Anas carried electric shocks in them. The Santa Anas sparked wildfires. “Better go […]

El Ratoncito (The Mexican mouse that became a fairy for a night)
Adriana Martinez

Picture Book Winner, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing

July 15, 2019 in /by

Dedicated to the curiosity and wonder of my daughters. This story was born out of a question from my seven-year-old, Zara. She asked, “Why does the Ratoncito come to our house and not the Tooth Fairy?” It begins with magic and love, with hope and wonder … Hundreds of years ago, when girls and boys […]

Meet Hunger Mountain’s Badass New Editor: Erin Stalcup

by Tracy Haught

July 1, 2019 in /by

Yes, ya’ll, Erin Stalcup is the badass new Editor of Hunger Mountain literary journal. Erin joined the faculty of the MFA in Writing & Publishing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts this past September. She is the author of the story collection, And Yet It Moves (Indiana University Press, 2016), and the novel Every Living Species (Gold Wake Press, 2017). Her fiction has […]

Hyphe(nation)
by Kaylee Y. Jeong

International Young Writers Prize for High School-Aged Writers

June 26, 2019 in /by

“In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.” —Toni Morrison   On the first-grade attendance sheet, Jessica’s legal name is the same as her Korean one, and Mrs. Powell stumbles. Min see oh? Min ee soh? Laughter from all of us little ones sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the blue carpet. Jessica smiles and […]

An Interview with Matthew Olzmann

by Nicholas Howard

June 24, 2019 in /by

Along with editing Hunger Mountain, students in the Publishing and Fieldwork class also met with each of our visiting writers. Our first guest was Matthew Olzman on Friday October 5th.  Matthew is the author of two collections of poems, Mezzanines, which was selected for the Kundiman Prize, and Contradictions in the Design, both from Alice James Books.  […]

A Profile of Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

by Nicholas Howard

May 24, 2019 in /by

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg began her visit to Kellogg-Hubbard Library on October 11th by reading from her latest release Miriam’s Well: A Modern Day Exodus. She shared with us the opening chapter when the story’s main character Miriam, her brother Aaron, their friend Alan, and Miriam’s family get caught in the subway during a blackout in New […]

Giving a Sexist Character Texture

by Ukamaka Olisakwe

May 10, 2019 in /by

  My favorite male character is Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. He values manliness, and this often is synonymous to violence. He abhors everything his late father Unoka stood for: gentleness, love for music, showing emotion, idleness. And so, he becomes the opposite of his father, is rich and powerful, rigid to a […]

Necks

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

March 25, 2019 in , /by

  When my six-year-old son                    was painting birds during art class                    his principal ordered a full lockdown because                    an armed man was spotted skulking nearby. When I got the news I could feel my heart throb                    in my neck. If you pushed                    even a single finger to my arm, I’d surely burst.                              I think of baby toucans who fall out of […]

Aubade with Ball Gag

R. Cassandra Bruner

June 27, 2018 in , /by

“Masturbation” is the ideal form of sex activity of this trans-gendered subject.” —Slavoj Žižek   Love          in this omnivorous air this weave of straps & copper          we must look like a long woman who          can’t stop touching herself A tangled braid of bone          A prairie of orchids speckled in amber          in pudendum in hooks          Lean closer           & hear the cries crackling […]